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shotkickers

  • link wray 95Missing Link, Australia’s only tribute to Link Wray, is back for its fifth year and will fall on what would have been the occasion of the guitar great’s 96th birthday, May 3.  The venue is Shotkickers, in the hip Melbourne neighborhood of Thornbury, and it’s a high volume multi-band line-up.

    Heading proceedings are The Bluebottles, laying claim to being Australia's #1 instrumental surf group. All female Link Wray devotees The Wraylettes are on the bill and will be launching a new seven-inch.

    Honk are bringing the rhythm 'n' roots with a set blending country music with a side serve of Spaghetti Western drinking songs.  

    Completing the bill is the country’s longest-running Link Wray combo, Sydney’s The Missing Link Band, headed by ex-Deadly Hume guitar high priest Stephen Bones Martin.

    The evening starts at 8.15pm and it’s $20 at the door.

  • sacred cowboys town hall 008

    The Sacred Cowboys
    Town Hall Hotel,
    North Melbourne
    Friday, August 28, 2024
    PHOTOS: James Stewart

    You may have seen a few videos of this secret warm-up gig on Sacred Cowboys leaderr Garry Gray's Facebook page.  They're great but being there was something else.

    See, unlike the two English twonks who recently announced another culture-sucking reformation tour, when we'd all assumed they'd been safely banished to a tiny island in an oasis in a vast desert, the Sacred Cowboys are a kind of poke in the moral and political eye, as well as being the kind of rock band people actually enjoy when it's parked in front of them. 

    Despite coming from the same melting-pot that punk initially came from, The Sacred Cowboys could never have been called “punk” with any accuracy. If they resembled anything, it would be a band from the early 1970s stages of Max's or CB's. They have a kind of outsider-taint to them, an aspect both foreign and familiar. Still do have it, you know.

    Also, while there was a reason Molly Meldrum dissed the band on “Countdown”, he'd been told to play them, and he had no choice. The truth is that the Sacred Cowboys were their own coiled critter, intent on their own mayhem. That their lyrics were also broadly and potently political added to their attraction.